


The Coming of Conan

by astorii



Series: Exes & Woes [6]
Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: AU, Gen, KaiShin Exes AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2019-12-27 01:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18293654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astorii/pseuds/astorii
Summary: Maybe he should have died.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I do not own DCMK. :)

Forgive him for wishing he had died right then.  
  
Shinichi hadn’t expected to wake up. Why, you may ask? He’s certain that the men in black had meant to kill him to guarantee his silence. After all, a dead man can tell no tale. Imagine his surprise when he wakes up after who knows how long with his eyes barely able to open and his lips kissing the earth.  
  
Turning his head to the side, he closes his eyes, wishing that he could fall asleep and wake up as if this were a dream. Shinichi tries to focus on the fact that someone had just tried to kill him; it’s completely and utterly terrifying that a man had been able to do that with zero remorse.  
  
He shudders to think about what would have happened if he had actually died right then.  
  
It’s a little crazy that his last moments on earth could have been spent with him writhing on the ground in complete agony while his life force slips through his fingers like sand. The rest of the world wouldn’t have known and he’d have died all alone. No one would know why he had died.  
  
Even his father, the world’s best detective next to Holmes, wouldn’t have been able to figure out who had killed his son.  
  
(And to think his last thought had been of Kaito of all things!)  
  
No longer wanting to dwell any further on this subject, Shinichi decides that remaining in this position is going to result in major discomfort if he doesn’t move sometime soon. Shinichi rolls onto his back and makes an effort to sit up. In doing so, his muscles scream at him, crying out for him to stop moving. Even though he wants to surrender and fall back, he doesn’t.  
  
He grits his teeth, realizing now just how sore he is from having laid on the ground as he did. The pain is nothing compared to what he had experienced, but it’s still something worth noting. As he rubs his lower back, which seems to be engulfed by his clothes for some reason, Shinichi finds that his head hurts.  
  
Fingers threading themselves in his hair, he presses against a bump on the back of his head. If someone were to ask, he’d say he’s only 90% certain that there’s dried blood under his fingertips and in his hair. He grimaces at that point. There’s been enough blood tonight. Even detectives like him have their limits.  
  
He drops his hand into his lap, looking around. For the most part, the area is dark and shadowed, a product of it being a little ways away from the well-lit park. It’s better like this, he thinks as he forces himself to pretend that the shadows won’t come to life to take his own. It should be a while before anyone stumbles upon him.  
  
As he’s surveying the area, he tests his legs to see if they have the strength to carry him. In his attempt to stand, he trips on the fabric of his jeans, surprised by the fact that his shoes feel a bit big. The thought puzzles him. He had been so sure this morning that he needed to go out and buy some new trainers at some point as they’ve been a bit snug for the past few weeks.  
  
Looking down, he notices that his jeans seem a bit large. The fabric swallows his legs. And the sleeves of his jacket! What’s the term—sweater paws? He remembers this with a sour feeling of disdain.  
  
Sighing, Shinichi looks up, searching the grass for his phone. As he’s looking, he’s folding the hem of his jeans to a more fitted length and pushing back the material of his sleeves. He certainly doesn’t notice how small his hands look because he’s too enraptured in finding where his phone is.  
  
If his phone is still here, that is.  
  
He knows that those men may have taken his phone to cover their tracks. Perhaps they realized that simply deleting the video may not get rid of it entirely. Though, if that’s the case, they must also realize that taking the whole phone isn’t their best bet either. They must have taken the phone with the intent of securing the footage for themselves before dumping it somewhere!  
  
Still, these thoughts don’t stop him from hoping his phone is still here.  
  
He needs the video if he wants proof that these men are dangerous! Showing up to the police and claiming that they had knocked him unconscious and forced a defective pill down his throat isn’t going to warrant enough suspicion no matter how credible he may be.  
  
It’s not about the pictures of and with Kaito. It’s not about the text history they have or the _I love you_ messages that they sent. It’s not about any of the call logs! Just that one video! That’s all he cares about! He just wants those men captured and in jail to serve time for the various crimes that they must have committed!  
  
“Who am I kidding,” he murmurs, wincing at how his voice sounds dry and scratchy. If he didn’t care about all that, he wouldn’t have gotten a new phone in the first place.  
  
Shinichi decides that now is as good a time as any to return home. It’s been a long night and he needs to make sure that he calls Ran in the morning. Telling her about what happened would prompt her to come over and she’s already had such a long night.  
  
Steeling himself with a breath, he pushes himself up. His knees are shaking and his head feels dizzy, but he pushes himself to take a few steps forward. Admittedly, he does trip a bit more than he usually does. He doesn’t have time to wonder why when a rustling sound distracts him.  
  
Frozen, he can only watch as a beam of light approaches him.  
  
“Are you all right, little boy?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bam! Here it is! As you can already see, this is going to proceed a little differently than Episode 2. ;)
> 
> I’m still debating on how long this will be. 3 or 5 chapters is my goal. Following that, I may start a longer fic that covers a few of the episodes as well as my own “episodes” that will be unique to this AU. :p
> 
> Let me know what you want to see! ^ ^


	2. Chapter 2

Shinichi winces as the nurse wraps a bandage around his head. She must have taken notice as she asks if she had done it too tight. He shakes his head. It’s just that the bump is a little sensitive, but he understands that it’s in his best interest to get his head wound treated and properly wrapped.  
  
His fingers drum against the sides of the paper cup filled with water that one of the other nurses had handed to him just a few minutes ago. He brings it to his lips and sips quietly, trying and failing to not listen in on the conversation clearly not meant for his ears.  
  
“Oh dear, you don’t suppose he ran away from home, do you?” one of the nurses whispers to her colleagues. He can feel their gaze on him and he wonders if they know he can hear them. He’s not an ignorant child! “I haven’t heard any reports on missing kids—at least none his age.”  
  
He listens to them whisper about how young he is as they speculate about why he must have run away. Shinichi can’t help his confusion—though, there’s this niggling feeling in the back of his mind that he can’t quite place. It’s kind of insulting how the park’s medical staff seem to be walking on eggshells around him as though he were a child. He just wants to be treated less like a six-year-old and more like the sixteen-year-old he is. Is that too much to ask for?  
  
“The poor thing,” one of them all but cooes. “That wound looked pretty bad. I hope the situation at home is okay.”  
  
One of the doctors says something in a whisper far too low for his ears to catch. Before Shinichi can dwell on it, one of the officers from before clears his throat and says, “Boy, do your parents know you’re here? Do you want us to call them for you so that they can pick you up?”  
  
Shinichi bristles, offended at the harmless but degrading epithet. “They’re out of the country,” he says, gauging their reactions. He immediately decides that he made a wrong move when everyone looks at each other with questionable expressions in their eyes. He adds, “I haven’t seen them in a few months,” when he remembers that his parents had visited for a few days before taking him and Kaito out of the country for a week during break.  
  
(All those pictures from that trip were on his phone!)  
  
“And who were you staying with this whole time?”  
  
“They let me stay home alone,” he answers after a moment of hesitation. One of the nurses brings a hand to her mouth as if she were in disbelief. While relatively uncommon, it’s not weird for a sixteen-year-old to be living alone. The house is still under his parents’ names and he’s always been independent. “Though my neighbor keeps an eye on me.”  
  
If he’s being honest, it’s more so the other way around.  
  
The officer nods, jotting down something. Shinichi’s eye twitches. What is this? An interrogation? “And where do you live? I’d like to make sure you get home safe and sound. I’d also like to have a talk with your neighbor. When are your parents getting back?”  
  
He frowns. “I can get home by myself. And my parents will be back whenever they feel like checking up on me.” That does sound like something his parents would do. His father knows that he doesn’t need to be coddled, but sometimes his mother just has to come back to Japan and check up on him. Shinichi sniffs indignantly. “If you really want to help me, you can go after those men in black! The one guy was blackmailing this man who’s been smuggling weapons! Then—bam! His partner caught me and whacked me on the back of the head.” He huffs. “I had it on camera until the guy took my phone after leaving me there to die.”  
  
“I… see.” The officer looks unconvinced. “Now, if you’ll just let me take you home, I can make sure these men in black don’t come back to finish the deed.”  
  
Shinichi has to bite his cheeks to keep from scowling or yelling at this man. Is he seriously not taking him, well, _seriously_?  
  
“I can get home myself,” he mutters. “I’m a second-year high school student. I can handle myself, thank you very much.”  
  
This declaration sends everyone into a fit of laughter and it seems like everyone has forgotten their concern over his supposedly terrible home life. Why are they laughing? Don’t they know who he is? Not to toot his horn or anything, but Kudō Shinichi is pretty well known throughout Japan. He isn’t the Heisei Holmes for nothing!  
  
Something is seriously wrong here. Shinichi doesn’t like the dreadful feeling in his stomach. He sets his cup down and stares at his hands. Now that he really looks at them, they do look a bit small. Everyone’s reactions… these baggy clothes… and then this voice of his… Is such a thing even possible? Or is he finally going crazy? The only plausible idea in his mind is that…  
  
“No matter how improbable something may be,” he murmurs, slipping off of the table while everyone is distracted, “there is only one truth.”  
  
Shinichi steps towards a mirror, holding his head high. He must be wrong because there is absolutely no way in Hell that—  
  
“Look, he doesn’t want to tell us his name or where he lives and he’s insistent about that wild story. The kid probably did run away from home. For now, all we can do is contact headquarters and have them watch him in the police child care center,” the other officer says to his partner.  
  
Child care center? He shakes his head. No. No! This isn’t happening. He turns back to his reflection. This cannot be happening. Shinichi swallows. There’s only one thing he can do now:  
  
_Run._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wowza. That was a doozy! I’ve been stuck on this chapter for the longest time. *-*
> 
> I think this installment will end at three chapters after Shinichi coins up his new name? Then the next part of the series may be a lil something from Kaito’s POV? Please do drop some of the cases from the first few chapters/episodes in the series that you’d like to see in this AU because I wanna have some canon cases before I make my own. ^ ^ I just don’t want to rush into the whole Kid thing prematurely.
> 
> But poor Shinichi... ;)


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Shinichi had done after convincing Agasa of his identity was take a shower.  
  
The water had turned a muddied red, taking away the dried blood in his hair. Before he’d entered the bathroom, Shinichi asked Agasa to search for his childhood clothes. The man had kept his promise as Shinichi found a box labeled _Shin-chan’s kids clothing_ sitting in the middle of his room. After finding some clean underwear that still fit him, he wasted no time in opening it and digging through in search of something to wear that didn’t engulf his now-small body in a mass of fabric.  
  
And that’s how Shinichi finds himself dressed in a blue suit jacket over a white button-up which had been tucked into a pair of light blue shorts. Absentmindedly, he tugs on the cuff of his left sleeve. He doesn’t remember ever owning any of these clothes aside from the button-up that he can distinctly remember wearing once or twice. The outfit he has now would have made his younger self cringe. He’d have called it stuffy and uncomfortable.  
  
Now, after a while of wearing his school uniform, such outfits are akin to a second skin; it makes him feel more comfortable and gives him some semblance of his teenage self.  
  
Agasa is rebandaging his head despite his protests. Shinichi is perfectly capable of bandaging his own head, but his neighbor insisted. Quietly, Shinichi relents before recounting the circumstances that led to his being shrunk.  
  
“I’m sorry I can’t do much about your predicament,” says Agasa, securing the bandage. Shinichi shrugs, doing his best to ignore the sting of disappointment. “I’m an inventor, not a chemist. I don’t even know what those men gave you. Without so much as a formula, I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do.”  
  
“‘S not your problem,” Shinichi murmurs. Flashes of black clothes and cold eyes appear in his mind. Clenching his fists and grinding his teeth together, he says, “I’ll find them.”  
  
“I know you’re upset,” Agasa says, “but you must remember: you mustn’t let anybody know who you truly are!” It’s probably the umpteenth time that he’s said it tonight. “If those men find out you survived, they probably won’t hesitate to kill everyone you love! Your parents… Ran-kun… Kaito-kun…”  
  
He should probably say something. Shinichi knows he should say something, but he doesn’t know how to say that he and Kaito are over without making things worse because it’s clear to him that Agasa already pities him for his situation. Instead, he turns his head, listening to the man closing up the first aid kit, and makes a remark about how he can’t just walk out into the world with a bare face. And he refuses to hide!  
  
But people aren’t that blind. Slow, maybe, but not blind. Someone is bound to see the similarities between the supposed child who popped out of nowhere and the famous teen detective who suddenly dropped off the face of the Earth.  
  
Although, he can say with utmost confidence that most people don’t look past the surface unless there’s reason to suspect that there could be something concealed underneath.  
  
“Glasses,” he murmurs, watching Agasa’s own glint in the warm light of the library. He pushes himself off the table, landing on his feet and stumbling. Agasa chastises him and Shinichi pays him no heed as he begins to open the bottom drawer of his father’s desk.  
  
Sitting underneath a binder-clipped, yellow-paged manuscript of one of his father’s older works is a pair of glasses that had been recklessly left out of its case. He picks it up, unfolding the temples and holding them up to the light. He sees the telltale signs of smudges and his nose twitches. He pops the lenses out and place the glasses on his face.  
  
Walking out into the open with one hand adjusting the spectacles to a more comfortable position, he asks, “How do I look?”  
  
He feels the scrutinizing gaze of Agasa as the man’s eyes roam over his shrunken body. Shinichi just hopes that his resemblance to his teenage self isn’t so blatantly obvious at first glance with the glasses on his face. It’s only moment later that Agasa gives his two cents.  
  
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were a cousin of the Kudōs,” Agasa remarks, frowning as he rubs his chin. “I think I’ll look into getting you some of those—what are they called? Oh! Fashion frames!” He shakes his head. “Or perhaps I could invent something—something to help you. But still. I would try to do something more. Maybe style your hair differently?”  
  
Shinichi sighs as he slips the glasses off and tucks them away in one of his pockets. He spins on his heel and points out that he needs some sort of backstory if he intends to roam around. It needs to be solid, but he supposes it’s fine that it only appears solid until you really look into it because he’s not very sure he can weave together the strongest identity.  
  
(That’s when you build your lies on truth, he remembers hearing Kaito say to him just a few weeks before they broke up. If you start with the truth, you make the deception more believable.)  
  
“I need… I need a name.”  
  
He looks past Agasa, peering into the dark hallway. The shadows seem to dance and he hurriedly looks away. Shinichi wanders over to one of the bookshelves.  
  
“Edogawa Rampo and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” he murmurs, reading the spines of his vast collection of mystery novels. “Edogawa… Edogawa Conan?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Agasa pipes up. “Sounds too foreign to me.”  
  
“That’s why it’s perfect! I was born in England to one Japanese parent and one _Hāfu_ , which explains the _Conan_ part and why I look more Japanese than anything else. We moved here when I was younger and were in the process of relocating when an accident left me in your care.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so hyped for this. I’m debating on what to do in the next installment. We’re gonna bring in Ran and we’re somehow going to get Conan to fall under her care.
> 
> Maybe it’ll be a 3 or 5 chapter installment detailing him adjusting to life as Conan? With an interlude about Kaito?
> 
> Feel free to drop some ideas in a comment. ^ ^
> 
> Anyway, so, looks like Conan and Agasa may be up for a while, trying to piece together some sort of backstory. Since Ran said she’d come over if he didn’t text her the next morning, they’ll have some time.
> 
> Edit: I’m considering a new way to introduce Conan to Ran. You know the kidnapping case that happens? With the little girl who faked her own kidnapping and then got kidnapped for real? I kind of want Ran to text Shinichi about that and then have Conan being like _oh shit_ and going out to solve the case or something. Idk.
> 
> But in the meantime...
> 
> Next Conan Hint™: Gloves.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to those who have stuck with me throughout this series! And thank you to everyone for taking the time out of your day to read this. :)
> 
> Please continue to show your support! Kudos and comments are very appreciated and definitely motivational. ^ ^


End file.
